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Mr. Monk and the Rapper
Mr. Monk and the Rapper is the second episode of the sixth season of Monk. Plot Introduction When rapper and hip-hop producer Murderuss (Snoop Dogg) is accused of putting a bomb on an enemy rapper's car, he hires Monk to take the case (Monk blacks out when Murderuss arrives, and believes that he told him to leave, when in fact he let Murderuss hire him). Plot After a long night of partying, rapper Extra Large (Marcello Thedford) emerges from a building in a back alleyway where a young female reporter is waiting to ask a few questions. Reluctantly, Extra Large agrees to answer her questions, which are mostly about some of the threatening messages his rival Murderuss has been sending. Meanwhile, the limo is making its way across town. Unknown to anyone, there is a ticking bomb in the left rear wheel well. When the car arrives, Extra Large gets in, and the car starts to pull away. It has gone all of a few feet when a rigged watch acting as the timer strikes 8:00 AM, causing the car to explode in a fireball. In another part of town, Adrian Monk and Natalie Teeger are trying to set Monk's clocks one hour forward due to Daylight Savings Time going into effect. As usual, Monk is obsessing about the fact that the clock is two seconds off when he springs it forward. While he is obsessing over that, Natalie notices that Monk has brought her flowers, but she is upset to find that the note says "Happy Secretary's Day," considering that what she does is much harder than what a secretary would do. Monk is still fussing over the clock being off, when he receives a visit from none other than Murderuss (Snoop Dogg), a rapper from Manslaughter Records, and his two associates, appropriately nicknamed Snake di Assassin and Silent Killa. Murderuss is no stranger to Natalie, who mentions that she's taken all of his records away from her daughter. He would like to hire Monk to clear his name, since he is the primary suspect in Extra Large's death, given the circumstances. Remarkably, Monk acts quite rationally towards Murderuss (such as shaking his hand without needing a wipe) and vows to have him proven innocent. After Murderuss leaves, Monk almost collapses against the wall and praises himself of getting out of the job and has to be reminded by Natalie that he DID take the job. Monk and Natalie join Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher at the crime scene. Natalie asks Randy about if he thinks Stottlemeyer respects him, and Randy gives her an ambiguous answer. When she tells the Captain about Murderuss's little visit that morning and Monk accepting the job, Stottlemeyer mentions that when Monk gets nervous, he blacks out and sometimes agrees to do stuff without even knowing it. Monk learns that the type of watch utilized as the timer is a white gold imported pocket watch, and that Murderuss wears just such a watch with him. Murderuss had just set the time to the right hour at Monk's place when Monk told him about DST, which he like many forget to do so. Stottlemeyer and Disher take Murderuss in to interrogate him. There is a mountain of evidence against him: it seems he was ticked off by the fact that Extra Large broke off from his label and started recording for another label, Fresh Rhymes Records. He also recorded a song on one of his latest labels called "Car Bomb," which happens to be the way Extra Large was killed in (said song has some very suggestive lyrics like, "Ch, ch, ch, I put the bomb in your limo, that's what the surprise is / Under your seat, like Oprah giving prizes!" which don't exactly help Murderuss's case). To make matters worse, the police have recovered a blasting cap stolen from a construction site only a half block away from Murderuss's house. Lastly, the limo driver was with the car all night long, and he's stuck in the ICU unit. However when Randy tries to rap those lyrics in the song, Murderuss disparages Randy's "skillz". Randy takes offense at this and begins talking about his musical repertoire. While the Captain tries to calm him down, Murderuss shouts his innocence while calling the interrogation that of "good cop, demented cop" Watching the interrogation from behind a window, Monk is still convinced that Murderuss might be guilty, but Natalie still thinks he is innocent. Regardless, he continues to investigate. Their next stop is the studio for Fresh Rhymes Records, where they watch a few people auditioning (and Monk has a bit of an argument with one of the auditioneers about word choice in one of the lyrics). They speak to the label's heads, Denny Hodges and Woody Mitchum. They mention that Extra Large had just moved to this label, and they had high hopes for him. In fact, they even remember where they were that morning: they were at their weekly breakfast meeting. Woody however complains about this. Even though it was 8am there was no place setting for him as there should have been. Denny continually apologizes for forgetting about it. Hodges mentions that he saw someone fitting Murderuss's description the night before the bombing in a parking garage, yet it was also very dark so he couldn't make out the man in question. While Monk holds his opinion, Natalie has a hunch, and she finds it odd that Hodges happened to see someone in that parking garage, and thinks Hodges is the killer. Monk dismisses her, noting that Extra Large was Hodges's meal ticket, and he had high hopes for his star. Their next step is to talk to the limo driver, who is out of intensive care now from the severe injuries of the explosion. That night, a mysterious man goes to the hospital and strangles the limo driver in his room. A white gold chain is found to be the murder weapon, and the footprint found matches a special edition shoe of the kind Murderuss wears. Stottlemeyer and Monk goes to Murderuss' house to back out of the contract. Stottlemeyer must stay in the hallway because he's a cop, leaving Monk to go talk to Murderuss. Monk tries to back out, but blacks out again (and is apparently given gold teeth in the process). With Murderuss about to be indicted and arrested, Monk packs his belongings and plans to escape from town with some plan in mind like buying a rail pass to make his way through Asia. Natalie once more brings up her suspicion on Hodges and him happening to see Murderuss in the parking garage at 7:00 PM that night, and Monk, looking at an analog alarm clock, suddenly realizes that the bomb missed its mark by a good hour due to Daylight Savings Time. Here's What Happened At a tribute concert for Extra Large, Hodges is giving a eulogy on his deceased star. Outside, Stottlemeyer formally apologizes to Murderuss for his accusations. Monk provides Murderuss with an off-screen summation. The crowd boos Monk when he comes on stage to accuse Hodges, but Murderuss quickly takes over and starts rapping out the summation. It was not Extra Large who was the target of the bombing, but rather Woody Mitchum, Hodges' business partner, whom Hodges had decided to kill rather than try to split their profits. He planted the bomb that night, planning for it to go off when Woody was in the limo, but forgot to factor in Daylight Savings Time, so the bomb missed its mark by an hour and instead blew up Fresh Rhymes' biggest star instead. This summation does explain why when Woody showed up at the hotel for the breakfast meeting with Hodges, he didn't have a place setting: it was because Hodges had assumed that he was already dead. Hodges later killed the limo driver because he feared that the man, having slept in the limo the night he planted the bomb, might have seen him fleeing afterwards. Hodges, hearing this, tries to run, but runs into Stottlemeyer. He says that they can't prove any of this, but Stottlemeyer presents him with a search warrant to show that they've already found his bombmaking equipment. Afterwards, while leaving out a back route, Murderuss invites Monk to be his security chief on his 27 stop tour. This time, despite blacking out again, he does decline. Background Information and Notes * The opening credits feature a hip-hop version of the opening theme -- performed by Snoop Dogg. * Many of the scenes were filmed on the Universal Studios Backlot in Hollywood, California. A soundstage can be briefly spotted in the opening scene, as well as the edge of a facade. NBC Universal owns USA, Monk's home channel (recently, Monk's home channel was switched to Sleuth, also owned by NBC Universal), so many scenes from Monk are filmed at Universal Studios. * The episode supposedly began on Secretary's Day as well as on the first day of Daylight's Saving Time. However, Daylight Savings Time always occurs on a Sunday whereas Secretary's Day is always on a Wednesday. Additionally, if you freeze the newspaper article Murderuss shows about Extra Large's death in Monk's apartment, it's dated May 4, 2007 - in 2007, the United States changed Daylight Savings Time to begin on the second Sunday in March. * Extra Large is killed on the first Sunday of Daylight Savings Time. Murderuss and his two associates show up at Monk's apartment that same morning to ask Monk to take the case and Snake di Assassin hands Monk a newspaper article about Extra Large's death. However, he was killed at 9:00 AM in the morning, meaning it would be most likely that any article about Extra Large's car bombing would be in the Monday morning newspaper, unless we are to assume that in this universe, the Chronicle has a Sunday afternoon edition. * The "Here's What Happened" explanation is rapped over samples of Soul Bossa Nova 6.02